Cons:

Judging solely on the painfully throbbing condition of our thumbs, Pure is a terrific racer. Infused with the same kind of insanely huge jumps and ridiculously intricate tricks that made the SSX franchise so successful, Pure builds on classic ATV racing gameplay with detailed customization and gorgeous environments from around the world. These elements combine to provide a spectacle of physically impossible stunts executed among lush, verdant locales. A few annoyances emerge after extended play (not the least of which will be the growing soreness and lurking blisters on your thumbs), but overall there's just not much to complain about in a game that knows its job and does it very well.

Thrash and Burn

Equipped with the usual different speed classes and variety of tracks and modes, Pure might appear at first glance to be a run-of-the-mill racer; on par with the likes of MX vs. ATV: Untamed. What separates Pure from other ATV racers, however, is the focus on solely ATVs. This limitation (combined with some pretty unrealistic gravity) gives Pure the freedom to open up tons of verticality in its tracks and offer a rich trick system to take advantage of all that air time.

Following the SSX trick model, Pure starts you off in each race with a basic level of tricks that can be performed by pressing a button and holding a direction on the left analog stick. Landing tricks successfully builds your boost gauge and unlocks successive tiers of tricks (four total, including the base level). It's a simple yet proven formula for this type of game, but Pure does a great job of balancing the use of boost against access to upper-tier tricks.

As you approach each jump, you have a prickly decision to make with regards to how much precious boost you want to eat up because it has a direct impact on how crazy you can get with the stunts that you can perform. In fact, races in the upper echelons of the speed classes will require you to weigh the benefits of higher jumps and the greater boost rewards they offer against simply boosting straight across the top of the jump in an effort to shave seconds off of your lap time. For such a seemingly simple racing game, there is a surprising amount of strategy involved in choosing which jumps to launch off of and how big to go off of them.